But Campagna did everything imaginable to stick out like a sore thumb, even though you’d expect a plainclothes cop to do the opposite. The new generation of European criminals had become more discreet, sartorially speaking, and the inspector violated the boundaries of good taste both for an on-duty cop and for a criminal. Like every eccentric, he proudly made his home in no-man’s-land.
That’s what I was thinking about while I waited for him in the parking lot of a buffet-style restaurant in an industrial park. Max wasn’t talking. I’d practically had to arm-wrestle him into coming to meet him, and the last thing he wanted to do was be introduced to a cop.
“Campagna knows that you exist and that you and I are both working on this case,” I’d said, exasperated, after his thousandth objection. “And after all, it’s better for there to be the two of us listening to what he has to say.”
The inspector had phoned ahead from the train on his way back from Rome. He needed to meet with me, urgently. I was hoping he was bringing good news until the instant I saw him step out of his car. The twist in his lips spoke clearly of weariness born of a long trip made in vain.
Max and the cop shook hands without introducing themselves.
“These days, it takes just over three hours to reach Rome by train,” the policeman began, as if chatting with someone at the bar. “That means you can get up at six and by midmorning you’re already in the offices of the Mobile Squad, where an amiable fellow cop can sweep away any hopes you might have of figuring out anything about this fucked-up case. And rightly so. The Roman trail is useless. Even if the whole thing had its origins in the academic world, there’s no way we can track it down.”
Campagna pressed a hand to his stomach. “I can’t seem to digest the rigatoni alla pajata that I ate.”
“That happens when you forget to include cloves,” Max explained in the tone of voice of a know-it-all. “At least one clove for every pound of intestine. Veal tripe, of course. I wouldn’t recommend beef tripe.”
The inspector shot him a look too admiring to be real. “You sure know about cooking. That’s not mentioned in your file. A passion you developed recently to help you get over some larger political defeat?”
The fat man sat openmouthed, aghast at the detective’s shameless presumption.
“Don’t take the bait,” I warned him. “The inspector is a bit of a prankster, he’s just pushing your buttons.”
Campagna put on a tense smile and went on talking about the case. “What doesn’t make sense to me is that there were no witnesses to the kidnapping. And yet it was broad daylight and there were plenty of cameras along the route, to say nothing of all the passersby.”
“Maybe he just showed up at an appointment he should have skipped,” the fat man put in.
“Maybe,” echoed the detective. “The only investigative lead I’m inclined to suggest is to check out the most recently formed gangs. I won’t be able to dedicate myself to it full-time since my boss just told me that I need to focus on a team of Italian-Albanian armed robbers, so don’t expect results anytime soon.”
“All right,” I said. “Let’s hope we have better luck.”
“What’s your plan?” asked the inspector.
“We still don’t really have one,” I told him honestly.
“After all, your Swiss matron will be paying for whatever you do,” he quipped acidly. “And I’d love to know just how much.”
“Let’s get out of here, Marco,” said the fat man, clearly offended, heading for the car that we’d picked up at the dealership just a few hours earlier. “We’re just wasting our time.”
I held out a hand to Campagna, who clasped it firmly. “You just can’t get over the idea that, since you’re a cop, you’re a cut above us,” I said in a weary tone of voice.
He shook his head. “You’re wrong, Buratti; I just can’t stand the idea that you guys are pocketing more money than I take home, and all completely off the books, because you don’t have so much as the hint of a license in your pockets.”
I turned on my heels and went over to my partner.
“And you made me travel all this way so I could listen to that lunatic cop insult me?” Max said, indignantly.
I waved to him to shut up. “I want to enjoy the ritual of turning over the engine, I want to fill my ears with the roar of a Škoda engine,” I said, improvising freely just to cut the tension.
“And your mental health is even worse than his,” the fat man hissed ferociously. “We drove all over the Veneto region like a couple of idiots in search of this jalopy.”
“What jalopy?” I objected. “This is a 2001 Felicia, from the last year of production.”
“Even the dealer didn’t want to sell it to you.”
“Because he wanted to sell me a brand-new model.”
“Do you know that we’re the only people even driving a Felicia? There aren’t any more on the roads these days. Everyone’s gotten rid of them.”
“That’s not true. I’m pretty sure that my friend the guitarist Paolo Valentini is at the wheel of his pride and joy right now.”
“Just like this one? Green with an orange trunk lid?”
I snorted. “As soon as I have a spare minute I’ll take it in to the body shop to have it repainted. Don’t harp on it. It’s a car that no one notices, no one gives it a second glance.”
“Fine. But have you noticed that this September is a hot one and a little humid too from time to time, and your Felicia didn’t come equipped with air conditioning?”
“If I buy you dinner, will you stop making me pay for the bad mood Campagna put you in?”
He turned suddenly to look at me. “Is it that obvious?”
I nodded. “You need to bury it under just the right amount of food and wine, Max. Choose a restaurant from the list our client provided.”
With a certain effort he pulled a rumpled notebook out of his back pocket. “Signora Oriana Pozzi Vitali and Professor Di Lello enjoyed a table at seven restaurants in the surrounding area. They even went to a few of them more than once.”
The fat man tossed the notebook against the inside of the windshield. “Fine, I may just be in a bad mood, but this idea of a pilgrimage to the various restaurants seems ridiculous.”
“If we start applying this approach to our investigation we can just give up right now.”
“Who do you think might have noticed them?” the fat man insisted. “And even if they did, so what? You think some guy saw them eating and talking and just decided to put a gang together and kidnap Di Lello?”
“You’re probably right, Max,” I admitted, doing my best to make him think. “But we have nothing to go on and just a short while ago Campagna showed up empty-handed. Experience has taught us that you should never overlook anything.”
He lit two cigarettes and handed me one. “Fine. Just don’t make me talk to that cop again.”
“He’s less of an asshole than you think he is. He just hasn’t managed to keep up with the times and he feels out of place.”
“Spare me that nonsense, Marco. And head for the highway. We’re going to Vicenza to have some baccalà.”
“Isn’t it a little too hot for salted cod?”
“No,” he replied tersely. “And don’t embarrass me with these awkward questions while we order. Leave it to me and everything will go smoothly.”
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Three days, three restaurants. No complaints in terms of the quality of the food or the waitstaff, but they were completely wasted expeditions as far as the investigation was concerned. We doled out princely tips to waiters and valet parking attendants only to be told that no one remembered the professor, even though his picture had been published in plenty of newspapers and broadcast on TV. No one had ever noticed any questionable characters, save the usual coke dealers and high-end whores, but by now those were just par
t of the scenery. One restaurant was equipped with closed-circuit TV cameras but the tapes were erased every week. Just to satisfy our curiosity, we paid to view the last three days. Hours and hours of boredom.
Friday night we went to La Nena. Reservations were required for dinner but luckily a couple had cancelled just a few minutes before we walked in. As they started us off with an excellent prosecco, Max and I exchanged a glance and a grin. That place really was patronized by the crème de la crème: outsourced industrialists and the professionals who serviced them with the adroit agility of tightrope walkers, low-end politicians with “bribe me” stamped on their foreheads, shopkeepers whose businesses were kept afloat by a little loan sharking on the side accompanied by sales clerks decked out like paid escorts. A portrait of Veneto—deeply ingrained and impossible to uproot—as greedy, vulgar, and parasitic.
The owner of the place was drop-dead handsome with an irresistible smile that everyone swooned over. He moved from table to table as if he were a movie star.
He stopped by ours too. “Everything all right?” he asked, eyeing us with an entomologist’s clinical scrutiny. “I’m the owner and you can call me Giorgio.”
“A pleasure,” said Max. “We’re just taking a look at the menu.”
“Take all the time you need. And if you need any advice don’t hesitate to call me,” he said, before moving on to the next table.
The whole place was impeccable. Every detail was born of a very specific idea of how to run a restaurant. The guest should feel perfectly at ease while enjoying a regional cuisine reinterpreted by a young chef, fresh off a round of awards and television appearances.
The clients were regulars, for the most part. They all seemed to know each other, launching jokes from one table to another. The rest were tourists or people drawn by the excellent reviews in specialty magazines.
“The food is very good here,” the fat man decreed as he wiped his mouth with an ivory cloth napkin. “And it doesn’t strike me as the kind of place where you’d run into the criminals we’re looking for.”
I took one last look at the diners. “Many of them are knee-deep in business and finance. You can’t rule out the possibility that someone recognized Signora Pozzi Vitali.”
Max mimed clutching at straws. “One thing we can rule out with 100 percent confidence, though,” he said, gesturing around the dining room. “No one recognized the professor.”
We burst out laughing and just then the proprietor came over, accompanied by two ladies. “Laughter is always the best medicine,” he said; his tone was ambiguous enough that I found it vaguely offensive. “Would you mind if these two lovely maidens joined your table? Otherwise I’ll be obliged to show them the door, and I’d be especially sorry to do so, since one of them is my wife,” he said, pointing to a woman who hastened to introduce herself as Martina.
“And I’m Gemma,” put in the other one. “The girlfriend.”
We helped them get seated, a little awkwardly because we would have preferred to be left alone.
The proprietor’s spouse was a recapitulation of the restaurant itself in human form. Perfect, impeccable, charming, but not excessively so. Everything about her was measured. The other one was different, much more similar to the other women eating in the restaurant. She downed Martina’s bubbly without asking permission, as if by habit. And she gulped her antipasto in just a couple of bites. Max and I were far too familiar with life’s disasters not to notice the boundless sea of unhappiness in which this woman was drowning. Of the two, there was no mistaking the fact that Gemma was more perceptive and smarter. Martina seemed somehow lobotomized.
After the usual chitchat and remarks on how odd the weather had been that summer, a long silence descended. The two women, perhaps feeling guilty about having invaded our table, began sounding out our willingness to converse with them. When they told us that they often wound up sitting with strangers, given the fact that they ate at La Nena every night, the two of us suddenly turned talkative, and in just a few minutes both women were attentively studying Professor Di Lello’s face.
Martina summoned her husband over with a wave of the hand. “Giorgio, honey, have you ever seen this gentleman?” she asked, handing him the photo.
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t,” he said calmly and then fired off a sharp, specific question. “Are you two gentlemen from the police force?”
“No,” I replied.
“Then I can’t understand why you would come to my restaurant and start showing that photograph around.” His tone of voice was not threatening, much less discourteous.
“Pure curiosity,” the fat man retorted brusquely.
Giorgio placed both hands on the shoulders of his wife and her friend. “Watch out for these two busybodies,” he joked before returning to his duties as a restaurateur.
Suddenly Martina decided to torture us by changing the subject to outlet stores. Not just one in particular, but all the outlets within a two hundred kilometer radius. By dessert I was ready to beg for mercy. Max, equally tested by the grueling ordeal, didn’t ask for a second round of grappa.
“Did everything meet with your satisfaction?” the proprietor asked at the cash register.
“Yes, thanks.”
“Then I’ll look forward to seeing you again. Come back whenever you like.”
In order to recover from our close encounter with that lunatic of a wife of his, we stopped to drink a beer. The evening was hot, the piazza was dotted with little café tables.
“Strange pair of girlfriends,” I noted.
“What the hell got into her? There was no way to get her to shut up or change the subject. And I didn’t like her husband one bit. Did you see how he reacted when we showed the professor’s photo? It was as if we were polluting his restaurant.”
“Maybe we made a mistake by not pushing the staff a little harder.”
“It would have just been a waste of time. Three more days and we’ll be done with our culinary tour. Not that I’ve minded, the Lord only knows, but I think it’s clear that our two illicit lovers didn’t get themselves into trouble between the risotto and the chicken cacciatore,” Max concluded.
CHAPTER SIX
I’d sniffed them out the second they set foot in La Nena. Then, when they’d pulled out the picture of that asshole, I’d had my proof. They weren’t cops, nor did they come out of the private sector. They were mercenaries. What I didn’t understand was how they’d managed to track me down. I immediately put in a call to Federico Togno, former carabiniere, former private detective, former perennially unlucky patron of the gambling dens of Northeastern Italy, former coke hound. He’d ruined his life for no particular reason because it wasn’t worth a damn to him. His role in the world was to serve. I’d picked him up out of poverty and set him back on his feet a couple of years ago, and ever since he’d tagged along after me like a loyal lapdog. I’d secured him a house and even a wife, Maria José Pagliaro, a prostitute just as short on brains as he was; she was a pain in the ass left over from when I was forced to close up shop as a pimp. She’d decided, and not without good reason, that all her former colleagues had come to ugly ends, and she’d said that she was willing to do anything I asked if I’d spare her life.
I’d told her the truth. “Believe me, they’re all fine, it’s just that I sent them to work somewhere far away.”
“I don’t want to go far away,” Maria José had whispered.
Even if she wasn’t at all bad looking, I didn’t know what to do with her. I’d screwed her a few times without enjoying it even a little. The only thing she was good for was as a wife, so I’d married her off to Federico.
“It’s your job to make my little soldier happy,” I had instructed her. “Make sure his cock is slick and shiny and keep an eye on him for me. Once a month you’ll come give me a full report.”
So I’d been able to rely on Federico with a
certain margin of safety. I used him as a driver, bodyguard, and investigator for 3,000 euros a month. In the past, when I wanted information, I’d made use of other lowlifes with police ties, but he was just rotten enough and might bring me better results. Little by little I’d gotten him used to the idea that there were times when violence was necessary. A couple of broken bones, a break-in or two, a rape. When Maria José let me know that her husband had enjoyed those experiences, I assigned him his first killing. A nice, easy job. A Maghrebi immigrant who had decided to bother my customers by grabbing purses right outside the restaurant. The fifth or sixth time it happened, I made up my mind that taking him out was the only way to rid the city of that parasite. Federico was up to the challenge. A portico, a winter’s night. Ali Baba was laying his last ambush when he was stabbed; the blade sliced through his right kidney.
After, I demonstrated my generosity, sending my hired killer and his wife on a ten-day vacation at a resort in Tunisia. That locale hadn’t been chosen at random, but he’d failed to detect the irony in the concealed reference to the victim’s place of origin.
That night I’d ordered him to tail those two assholes and now I was waiting for him to come back and feeling a bit anxious. It was getting late and I was in a hurry to find out as many details as possible so that I could react appropriately.
If I had been found out, others would soon be showing up, and certainly not to pay the kind of astronomical check I’d saddled those two with. That said, the looks on their faces when I’d gone over to their table had hardly indicated suspicion.
Some tiny nugget of evidence must have led them to La Nena, but the situation could still be considered well under control.
My henchman knocked at the restaurant door at 2:30 A.M. “Sorry, Giorgio, but first those guys had a couple of beers out here in the piazza, then it took them forever to get to Padua. You know they get around in a Škoda that’s old as the hills?”
“Once they got to Padua, where did they go?”
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